On which I write about the books I read, science, science fiction, fantasy, and anything else that I want to. Currently trying to read and comment upon every novel that has won the Hugo and International Fantasy awards.

Thursday, December 31, 1992

Comments: In 1992, the Mythopoeic Awards experienced two significant and, thus far permanent, changes. The first change is that the two award categories were split into four. Going forward, there would be two awards for fantasy literature - one for Adult Fantasy Literature, and one for Children's Fantasy Literature - and two awards for scholarly work - one award for work focused on the lives and works of the Inklings, and another that would honor scholarly work related to fantasy and myth in general. I consider this change to be and excellent one, as it allowed the Mythopoeic Society to both expand the range of works it would honor and also compare works that are similar to one another.

The other change is that from this point forward, all of the non-winning nominees would be listed in each category in most years. I also regard this change to be a good one, as it gives outside observers a chance to compare the winning works in each category with their competition, and make an informed evaluation.

Location: Campbell Conference Awards Banquet at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas.

Comments: The 1992 Campbell Award results are curious. Not because of what book won, but rather because somehow the third place finishers all ended up in a three way tie. At first I thought this might be a sneaky way for the judges to add in more finishers, and consequently make the Campbell Award results look more like the Hugo or Nebula award results, with a full slate of non-winning nominees, but since this format does not seem to have been replicated in succeeding years, that doesn't seem to be the case. It just seems that the extraordinary unlikely result of three novels earning exactly enough votes to share third place in the balloting is the explanation.

Comments: It is always interesting to see books on award lists that one has read and realize that they received much more acclaim when they were published than one would have thought. I have read both Xenocide by Orson Scott Card, and The Garden of Rama by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee, and I was decidedly unimpressed with either. And yet the Locus Award voters ranked Xenocide as the second best science fiction novel of 1992, and The Garden of Rama only slightly further down the ballot. Perhaps they looked better in 1992 and have simply not aged well. Perhaps people were attracted by the names of Card and Clarke and voted based upon that. I don't know exactly why they are ranked where they are, but their presence so high on the ballot certainly seems undeserved to me.

Other Nominees:
2. Xenocide by Orson Scott Card
3. Bone Dance by Emma Bull
4. The Summer Queen by Joan D. Vinge
5. All the Weyrs of Pern by Anne McCaffrey
6. Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick
7. Heavy Time by C.J. Cherryh
8. The Dark Beyond the Stars by Frank M. Robinson
9. Synners by Pat Cadigan
10. Brain Child by George Turner
11. The Garden of Rama by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee
12. Ecce and Old Earth by Jack Vance
13. A Woman of the Iron People by Eleanor Arnason
14. Russian Spring by Norman Spinrad
15. The Trinity Paradox by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason
16. Death Qualified: A Mystery of Chaos by Kate Wilhelm
17. The Illegal Rebirth of Billy the Kid by Rebecca Ore
18. The Ragged World by Judith Moffett
19. Carve the Sky by Alexander Jablokov
20. The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling
21. Eternal Light by Paul J. McAuley
22. Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede by Bradley Denton

Other Nominees:
2. The Little Country by Charles de Lint
3. Eight Skilled Gentlemen by Barry Hughart
4. King of Morning, Queen of Day by Ian McDonald
5. The Rainbow Abyss by Barbara Hambly
6. The Hereafter Gang by Neal Barrett, Jr.
7. Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett
8. Riverrun by S.P. Somtow
9. Outside the Dog Museum by Jonathan Carroll
10. King of the Dead by R.A. MacAvoy
11. Nothing Sacred by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
12. The Sorceress and the Cygnet by Patricia A. McKillip
13. The Revenge of the Rose by Michael Moorcock
14. Cloven Hooves by Megan Lindholm
15. The Magic Spectacles by James P. Blaylock
16. The End-of-Everything Man by Tom De Haven
17. Flying Dutch by Tom Holt
18. Elsewhere by Will Shetterly
19. The White Mists of Power by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
20. The Architecture of Desire by Mary Gentle
21. Illusion by Paula Volsky

3. Griffin's Egg by Michael Swanwick
4. Jack by Connie Willis
5. Star of the Sea by Poul Anderson
6. And Wild for to Hold by Nancy Kress
7. Fetish by Edward Bryant
8. Desert Rain by Mark L. Van Name and Pat Murphy
9. Our Lady of the Harbour by Charles de Lint
10. City of Truth by James Morrow
11. Outnumbering the Dead by Frederik Pohl
12. The Mill by Paul Di Filippo
13. Candle by Tony Daniel
14. Canso de Fis de Jovent by John Barnes

Other Nominees:
2. Fin de Cyclé by Howard Waldrop
3. Matter's End by Gregory Benford
4. Gold by Isaac Asimov
5. Black Glass by Karen Joy Fowler
6. Miracle by Connie Willis
7. Over There by Mike Resnick
8. What Continues, What Fails . . . by David Brin
9. A History of the Twentieth Century, with Illustrations by Kim Stanley Robinson
10. Mairzy Doats by Paul Di Filippo
11. The Better Boy by James P. Blaylock and Tim Powers
12. Dispatches from the Revolution by Pat Cadigan
13. Understand by Ted Chiang
14. Traveling West by Pat Murphy
15. Living Will by Alexander Jablokov
16. What Eats You by Norman Spinrad
17. (tie) The Invisible Worm by Brian Stableford
(tie) The Return of Weird Frank by Allen M. Steele
19. A Tip on a Turtle by Robert Silverberg
20. Standing in Line with Mister Jimmy by James Patrick Kelly
21. The Happy Man by Jonathan Lethem
22. Water Bringer by Mary Rosenblum
23. Snow on Sugar Mountain by Elizabeth Hand
24. Life Regarded as a Jigsaw Puzzle of Highly Lustrous Cats by Michael Bishop
25. The Will of God by Keith Roberts
26. The Ragthorn by Robert Holdstock and Garry Kilworth

Other Nominees:
2. Playgrounds of the Mind by Larry Niven
3. Remaking History by Kim Stanley Robinson
4. Gravity's Angels by Michael Swanwick
5. The Best of James H. Schmitz by James H. Schmitz
6. Mirabile by Janet Kagan
7. The Book of the Dead by Tanith Lee
8. The Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy by Avram Davidson
9. The Bone Forest by Robert Holdstock
10. Grimscribe: His Lives and Works by Thomas Ligotti
11. The Collected Short Fiction of Robert Sheckley by Robert Sheckley
12. Lafferty in Orbit by R.A. Lafferty
13. Wormwood by Terry Dowling
14. The Start of the End of It All by Carol Emshwiller
15. Transreal! by Rudy Rucker
16. Sexual Chemistry by Brian Stableford
17. Courting Disasters and Other Strange Affinities by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

Comments: Although he didn't win any of the categories, with four nominations, on for Best Novel, one for Best Novella, and two for Best Short Fiction, 1991 was clearly Charles de Lint's year. This is not to say that other authors didn't have a great year as well: Robert Holdstock won for Best Novella and was nominated for Best Collection, Darrell Schweitzer won a Special Professional Award and was nominated for Best Novella, Ellen Datlow won for Best Anthology and was nominated for another work in the same category, and Martin H. Greenberg garnered two nomination in the Best Anthology Category. Why this concentration of nominees occurred is unclear - the established pattern for the World Fantasy Awards to this point had been for the same people to be nominated from year to year, but it was rare for people to garner multiple nominations in a single year - but one possible explanation is the increasing concentration of the publishing industry, squeezing out the authors who provided the revolving variety around the perennial stalwarts.

Other Nominees:The Gallery of His Dreams by Kristine Kathryn RuschGwydion and the Dragon by C.J. CherryhOur Lady of the Harbour by Charles de LintThe Pavilion of Frozen Women by S.P. SomtowTo Become a Sorcerer by Darrell Schweitzer

Other Nominees:The Bone Forest by Robert HoldstockGrimscribe: His Lives and Works by Thomas LigottiLafferty In Orbit by R.A. LaffertyMore Shapes Than One by Fred ChappellNight of the Cooters: More Neat Stories by Howard Waldrop

Comments: I have not read either Pat Cadigan's Synners or Paul J. McAuley's Eternal Light, but I have read Stephen Baxter's Raft, and I found it to be an excellent book. If those two books turn out to be better than Baxter's imagined universe where gravity is a thousand times stronger than it is in our universe, then I will be pleasantly surprised. I think this highlights the overwhelming nature of printed science fiction in the modern world. I've read a lot of science fiction, and I have the sagging bookshelves to prove it. But in many award years, I find that I have read only a few of the nominated works, and frequently I haven't read the winners. This isn't because I've been avoiding them, I just haven't gotten to them yet, because there is simply so much excellent published science fiction turned out every year that it is almost impossible to keep up with it.

Comments: Apparently tired of making it public that they were consistently inducting mediocre novels into their Hall of Fame while giving the cold shoulder to much better books that were nominated against them, the Libertarian Futurist Society appears to have decided to solve this problem by simply not listing the non-winning nominees. Ironically, in 1992, one of those better books that had been an also-ran in previous years actually gained induction into the Hall of Fame, so perhaps this plan was not as well thought out as its creators might have thought.

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